If it was in his power to end the cycle of clinging to the old ways, old technology, and old corruption, he’d make it happen no matter what it took. The oligarchy masquerading as a confederacy needed to end. With Lena, they could stop it. The power they could gain from her to change the order of everything promised to shatter the Council.
He scanned Mark’s face, but the younger agent’s only agenda seemed to be distancing himself from Lucas’s fall.
Mark shook his head. “No. He was working hard on something. But he always did.” Mark gestured to the doorknob, a symbol of the transgression. “But this—no. I got nothing to explain this.”
Alex sighed and shook his head in regret. “Damn,” he murmured to himself, loudly enough for them both to hear. “The kid had potential.” He stared out the window in disgust for a beat and then turned to them. “You got this?” he asked Salas. At his nod, Alex told them, “I’m gonna head out, then. See if I can salvage this.” A little bit of honesty always made the lie sweeter to the ears.
He left them in his office, working out the details of Lucas’s mistake. He wore the mask of concerned partner as he made his way through the building, but his teeth were grinding. He’d been so close to being done. Councilor Three departed for the annual Council Meet in three short months. The Councilor would travel cross country with his lackeys, security, and Zone trading partners to meet the other eight Councilors. They’d set mutual policy and deal with any disputes. Alex had positioned himself as the only choice as the Zone’s agent liaison to the delegation, a position affording him the luxury of bringing in his own small support team. He’d quietly done favors for and tolerated time spent with men he would have preferred to arrest or bury. He included Councilor Three on that list. Even the suggestion of a scandal could scuttle all of Alex’s work.
Alex’s mind worked the problem. If he could bury what Lucas had done by planting key pieces of incriminating evidence that suggested Lucas was part of a splinter group, he could pull it off. Not only would he discredit even the memory of the steaming pile of Sparklet crap, but he’d also cement his own position.
As his mind ticked through and created a list of upcoming activity, he almost missed the conversation ahead of him down the short hall.
“I’m sorry, Miss. Agent Reyes may not even be in the building.” Margie, the Council receptionist, used her best ice queen voice. “I can schedule an appointment for later in the week—”
“I need to see Agent Reyes now.” Lena said, quiet and determined, but with a little edge of fury.
In spite of the anger in her voice, he grinned at the sound of it. She’d made her choice. She had come to him. If he could get her out of the building before Lucas returned, she’d be safe.
“You need to go get him.” Lena had replaced quiet and determined with scorn.
He winced. Margie wouldn’t like that at all. He moved to step forward as Margie responded, her voice having sunk to frostbite level chill.
“I don’t know where he is, Miss.”
“I do.” Lucas spoke from the hall that emptied into the lobby from the rear of the building. He meandered out to Lena and Margie, hands in his pockets. “Agent Reyes is sitting in his office,” Lucas lied. “Waiting for me to let him know how best to hunt you down. Do you know how it is I’m supposed to find out?”
The heat and loathing in Lena’s voice increased. “I imagine you’ll use my family,” she said. “But it’s not necessary. I’m here to turn myself in. You can leave them alone.”
“Oh, I don’t know that I can convince Agent Reyes to do that. We’ve already picked up your sister. And your little nephew Joseph, too. I spent the morning catching up with them.” In the beat of silence, Alex imagined Lucas was smiling. “And there’s no telling what a man like Agent Reyes will do. Or which room he’ll start with.”
“You’re pretty brave,” she snapped, “to say that to my face after what I did to you yesterday. If I’ve got nothing to lose, what’s to keep me from hurting you again?”
“Because, Lena Gracey, I will make sure your family suffers for every moment you resist us.”
His voice was pleasant, but Alex’s ire at his younger partner multiplied.
“I’m not resisting you.” Her voice throbbed, thick and pulsing with hate, proof of her struggle not to strike at Lucas. “Let Teresa and Joseph go.”
It was time to intervene. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t end well. He couldn’t see any easy way out. His mind scrabbled at scenarios, flipping through and discarding almost as rapidly as he could form the thoughts. He stepped out, a smile on his face. Lucas and Lena both caught the movement and turned. Neither of them seemed happy to see him.
He sauntered down the short hall toward them. Venomous intent glared through her eyes. He could feel his body begin to respond, his throat constricting around the urge to cough. But he’d spent a good portion of the ride to and from Fort Nevada deconstructing what she’d done to him. He couldn’t reproduce it. He could damn well resist it. When he reached them, he cocked his head to the side and smiled at her.
“Did you really think that little trick would work on me again?” He raised his hand and shook his index finger in the air, making a tsking noise. “Fool me once….”
Her face reddened with rage, but she behaved. She was probably plotting her next move. He imagined it would be painful. She’d make a hell of a weapon.
She’s already one hell of a woman.
Thanks to Lucas, he’d lost any influence he might have gained from Ace’s trip out to reassure her of his intentions. She had worked up the courage to come directly to him, made the choice to do what would be best for her family. Now, whatever kernel of trust had started to grow, Lucas had destroyed. Regret for that loss weighted Alex’s belly.
He swung to face to Lucas. When he spoke, he had lowered his voice to a near whisper. “And speaking of fools,” he said. “What in Dust do you think you’re doing?”
Lucas had the gall to sneer at him. He wasn’t even bothering to hide his dislike for his superior. He thought he’d completed a coup.
Speaking of fools, indeed.
“I just lured in a dangerous, illegal Spark. By myself,” Lucas declared, allowing his voice to carry. “And I did it in spite of the interference and delay tactics of my supposedly superior officer, who is clearly too much of a coward to do his job.”
From the corner of his eye, Alex caught her reaction. He paused a moment to allow the realization of what Lucas had said to sink in. See? He told her in his mind, not involved. Not this time. She turned the force of her blue-green, venomous eyes, and her fury, from Alex to Lucas.
He gave his attention back to his puffed up junior partner. “Actually,” Alex said evenly, allowing his own voice to carry without it being obvious, “what you did was break into my office, forge my signature, and illegally use my seal to gain access to the Councilor’s vehicle, and then taunt a dangerous, illegal Spark in a lobby full of unprotected citizens of Azcon, and in the building where our Councilor works.”
Would that be enough for her to figure out he wasn’t responsible for any of this? That he hadn’t betrayed her? It should be. She was a clever woman. Whether or not she would realize he didn’t have a choice about what came next was the question. That, and whether she’d forgive him.
Citizens who had been waiting for appointments with various Council officials began to move away from them. With the movement came whispers and fear. Alex caught a brief flash of fabric and skin to his right. An agent who’d been coming around the corner from the other side of the building sank into a crouch and moved into position behind the low wall separating the back of the building from the lobby area.
“But you’re right,” he told Lucas, “you did do that alone, in spite of the direct orders of your senior agent.” He needed her to strike out at Lucas. Surely knowing what the ass had done would incite her. Any time now, Lena. “Orders that were born of caution and experience, Junior Agent Lucas, and extrapolating what one Spa
rk like this woman might be capable of doing if she’s brought into a room full of people while she’s still conscious.”
Hello, Lena? Any time.
Lucas looked uneasy. The agent crouched just to Alex’s right, out of sight of both Lucas and Lena, was also distinctly uneasy. He removed a Taser from his belt. The weapons were even more effective at controlling Sparks than the regular population.
Alex hammered his point home to Lucas, raising his voice as if genuinely worried. He had the attention of the captured audience of agents and citizens. He hoped it would be the final push for her. “Have you forgotten what the woman did to us yesterday? Two experienced agents? You’re a fool, Lucas!” He turned to Lena then, raising one hand in a calming gesture.
Her lips were turned upward in a mean smile directed at Lucas. “Maybe he’s not a fool, Agent Reyes. Maybe he’s just a slow learner?”
Finally!
Lucas paled. He fought her for a moment, lips pressed together. They parted to allow a sound that was half-gasp and half-cough to wheeze out. Beside Alex, the agent swung his hand out, preparing the Taser. With her attention focused on Lucas, Alex shot a hand out to intercept the weapon and took it, holding it down behind his thigh.
Lena’s chest rose and fell, her face mottled red beneath dark freckles. “All I wanted was to be left alone!”
Lucas stood, knees locked, fighting for consciousness.
Her glower dipped down to his knees. They buckled, and Lucas collapsed to the floor at her feet. The mean smile crept back.
Alex took a deep breath. “Damn, Lena. You are truly amazing.” The words were soft, but not so soft that she wouldn’t hear them. He shook his head. “I am so sorry.”
Her brows knit together. She slid one foot back in a cautious step away from him. “What are you sorry for?”
“The headache.” He flipped his hand out and up, pulling the trigger. The darts shot out and impaled her with small barbs to deliver their voltage and shatter her concentration. She went down. Her head cracked on the floor, and she remained down, small and crumpled.
Bitterness flooded Alex’s mouth and coated his tongue. He sighed and shook his head.
She’s definitely going to hold this against me.
7
Lena came back to a world of crackling white energy. White light glowed from under her cracked eyelids. White noise hummed in her ears. The white buzzed beneath her skin. It crawled and bit in stinging waves over her head and down her body.
She opened her eyes. Light blazed in. She squinted and tried to turn away from the twin lamps hanging above her head, shadowy metal arms bent behind them. A strap ran across her brows, pinning her head to a hard mattress. She jerked her arms up to reach for it, then her breath caught in her chest like a fluttering bird of panic. Restraints yanked her wrists back. She tightened her fists and lifted, pulling up more and more violently. When that failed to free her, she bucked her body up. Restraints bound her at chest, hips, and ankles. Air chilled her skin. They’d taken her clothes?
Her breath sawed in and out. She blinked tears back and rolled her eyeballs, straining to see past the light. It was no good. At the edge of her field of vision, wires curled away from her temples and down.
Were the wires the source of the constant biting sting at her temples?
Lena lay still. She had to stay calm, to focus, and to think, so when an opportunity presented itself she could take it. But she couldn’t stay focused. Each time she almost had her breath under control, the controlling thought would slip away, lost in the white noise coating the inside of her head or in the stinging that caused her flesh to crawl. She’d have to start again.
After the fifth or tenth or twentieth attempt, her tenuous hold on control snapped. Her breath gasped out again, wet and raw with tears. This was it. Everything her father had warned her about. She’d failed. She’d taken a chance, grabbed at an opportunity to keep her mother safe, and had walked right into the trap. The Council had her now, and the Council did terrible things to powerful girls.
Please no please no please no.
Her father’s serious, freckled face flashed before her. He smelled like heated metal. Fear. His hands held her shoulders as he reminded her again. But when he opened his mouth, she heard no words, only the buzz of static.
Stop stop stop stop stop.
Her mother came to her, pushed her father gently away and stroked Lena’s hair away from her face. Her mother had been the patient one, the one who’d reassured her when her father’s insistence made her cry. She had a gentle touch, like her smell—rain in the desert, sky and earth, clean water. Mama had been as soothing as cool water before Lena’s father died. Before Mama began to blame Lena.
Mama I want to go back. I want to go home. I want to go back. I want to go home. I want to go home.
A moan filled the air. She listened, rigid and still, straining to hear beyond the soft static. Had it been her own voice crying the words aloud? In the wash of shame and fear following the realization, there came another sound from outside her own body. Voices.
Lena closed her eyes to the bright light and her mind to the static. She breathed deep once, twice, calming the hysteria-tinged hiccupping breaths. She listened. Yes. Voices. The low rumble of men talking outside the room. Not talking. Arguing.
Reyes.
A stab of hatred arrowed through her, so pure and strong that it almost felt good. Trust him, he’d said. He’d get her to safety, he’d said. Lies. She’d believed them, too, just before he betrayed her. She’d wanted to believe them. She’d looked for a reason to. And now she was strapped naked to a table in Council custody.
The voices ebbed in volume. She strained to hear them, to pick out intelligible words from the stream of low sound, but she failed. After a moment, a lock turned over behind her and to the right. Footsteps shuffled on the floor as several people entered the room. The door closed again.
Lena waited. She held her breath, paralyzed, only her hammering heart reminding her that she lived. For a moment no one moved. They stood outside her limited field of vision. One, then another, walked crisply across the floor. Blinded by the lights shining upon her face, she still couldn’t see them. Dark shadows examined her.
Slow steps came from her right. An arm reached across and snapped off each lamp in turn. She blinked in the sudden absence of light. By the time her eyes adjusted, Lucas had pushed each lamp back and up, away from her face, and then retreated to the side near her knees.
Another man joined him, moving in from the corner to flank her on the other side of the bed. He was older, his hair mostly grey except for an odd pocket of black along the hairline above his left eye, his face crisscrossed with seamed frown lines. He wore matching pants and shirt, an electric blue flecked with green, and both were prohibitively expensive silk relic-wear. He looked at her as if she were a specimen, a mixture of revulsion and dark fascination on his face. She recognized him.
“You’ve got your second chance, Agent Brayer, so then tell me,” the Councilor of Zone Three said, gesturing to indicate Lena, “how all of this works? You’re sure she’s incapacitated?” His voice had the resonating quality of someone who spoke and expected to be heard.
Agent Brayer? Second chance? Am I the second chance?
Lucas smiled and nodded, opening his mouth as if to answer, but another man stepped forward. He was middle-aged, older than Reyes and Lucas, but not as old as Councilor Three. Tall and broad, his bullish shoulders sloped into a thickly muscled neck. When he reached the end of the bed, he looked at the doorway. His gentle, soft voice surprised her. “Alex? If you’d care to leave the guards and join us?”
Five slow footsteps later, Reyes appeared at her shoulder. “Lena.” The greeting came low and even. His eyes were hooded, eyelids sheltering his expression from the men.
From her angle below him she could see directly into their dark depths to the emotion he seemed to struggle to bury. Disgust? Anger? Regret? Each time she tried to put a name to it, the wor
d skittered away in her mind, driven out by the buzzing that filled her thoughts. She grunted her frustration, the sound barely registering as a huff of air. She swiveled her view from Reyes to focus on the ox at the foot of the bed, already talking.
“Councilor, if you’ll notice the electrode pads at temple, chest, pelvis, and ankles? We have a constant feed of electric current flowing into the subject—”
“Lena,” Reyes interjected. “Her name is Lena.”
The big man’s brows lifted. “Alex. I had no idea you were a sentimentalist.” The corners of his mouth twitched.
Reyes met his stare without flinching. “I’m not, Director Hernandez. But if I’m going to do something for the good of the people, then I will do it without shying away from full knowledge of exactly what it is I am doing and to whom. I take that burden because it is part of the job I believe in. I don’t look away. I don’t close my eyes. And I don’t try to make the weight of it less by dehumanizing the people who suffer for it.”
She glowered at him. Was that all it took for him to excuse his dishonesty?
The thought slid away from her.
What about trust? Broken trust?
“Alejandro.” The Councilor’s voice expressed his oily admiration, even if his words were a rebuke. “Please allow Director Hernandez to continue. I’d rather watch you gentlemen work tonight—” His speculative leer fell upon Lena.
She shivered and shrank back, aware enough to be afraid of the avarice in his gaze. He wanted to see her hurt.
“—but my presence is required elsewhere. This is all the demonstration I will get.”
Reyes extended his head in a nod. “My apologies, Councilor Three. Of course, you’re right.” He waited a beat before speaking again.
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